


No One Would Riot for Less

by singasongofdestiel



Category: Bright Eyes (Band), Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, Coda, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, M/M, POV Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5313875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singasongofdestiel/pseuds/singasongofdestiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is the only one who hasn't lost hope yet, the only part of Team Free Will who thinks the Apocalypse won't happen. But he still needs the support of his broken angel to pull it off, and Castiel needs him just as much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Would Riot for Less

Castiel knew enough to be aware that his life (as it was) was limited, particularly right now. He didn’t know enough to be aware of how the end would come: it could be invisible, a wall of holy fire trapping him in with doom, in any of his breaths as the impala coasted along some black backwater road. The human news on the television made him certain that the Apocalypse was imminent.

He had failed, and so the world was not ending due to the madness of government (as many theorists liked to believe), or in the great flood which the Mayans had predicted. There was no more ‘Team Free Will’— Sam had accepted Lucifer and that was that. They had been eclipsed by destiny, as they should have known they would be.

Dean still had a nutjob plan to end it all— or rather, to prevent the end of it all— but the fight was over for Castiel.

“I’m sorry, Dean. This is over.”

The force with which Dean pushed him back into the wall briefly startled the angel out of his new-found nihilism.

“You listen to me, you junkless sissy—“ but here Dean ran out of steam. He let go of Cas’ collar, but didn’t move away.

“Do you really think that?”

The plea broke something inside him that Castiel didn’t know could be broken. Part of him was reassured by Dean’s belligerence; even if the world was ending, some things could be depended upon. Because of this, he carefully debated his next words— turning them over like recently excavated pottery, carefully brushing the sand and dirt of a thousand years away— but Castiel still went with the truth.

“Yes, I do.”

The emptiness inside him became fuller as he saw some of it reach Dean. For a moment, the world looked as incomprehensible and infinite as it did to an electromagnetic wave floating somewhere among the stars; as unfathomable as it had looked to him before all of this, before Dean. It zoomed back in on itself as Dean moved closer, closer.

Castiel’s spine tightened, faced with the supernova of Dean’s pupils. He wanted to run, to lash out, there was an incredible anger building between them. Slight nausea crept in his chest, and he struggled to listen to what Dean was saying.

“Did you hear me Cas?!” A fleck of spit landed on his cheek and Castiel admitted that he had not, in fact, heard at all.

Dean moved closer, impossibly, microscopically. His voice was low, quiet, broken.

“I said that if that’s true then you should love me now.”

Castiel didn’t understand. Of course he loved Dean— he had rebelled from heaven entirely because of, and for, him, and had told him as much. The destruction of all human existence didn’t change that.

The lack of response seemed to anger Dean.

“Hell is coming, Cas! Heck, hell is here already!”

Cas felt his coat gripped in Dean’s fists again, and realised that the wave of emotion that he had picked up was not truly anger. A study of Dean’s sutured eyebrows and winched jaw confirmed it. This was closer to anguish, regret even. But Dean had done nothing to be ashamed of; he had fought and fought, until and after everyone else had given up. Castiel didn’t know how to tell him this, didn’t know what to do— until he was told.

Dean’s voice became flat, a void. The desire to be misinterpreted was evident in the break in his voice as he said, “Kiss my mouth.” The plainness of it matched the moment; it was both grey and heavy, inescapable and direct.

Castiel paused for a moment. Then gently, gently, he closed the small space between them. Like two butterflies pinned under a glass jar, they fluttered, frozen, around each other. A slight brush of the lips, and Castiel tried to convey all of his thoughts. _You are worth more than this, Dean Winchester. You do not deserve this responsibility. It is not yours to bear._

Cas pulled back, looked at the two pairs of feet interlocked below him. He felt tiny, insignificant. He saw, more clearly than ever, that his role as a soldier in heaven’s war had no heart at all. He would be sacrificed at any moment, and his superior’s decisions lacked even the excited uncertainty of a card game. He had been controlled for so long by those who would extinguish him as easily and unthinkingly as a human would a cigarette stub. His life was a bullet and a bet— he was merely there to fulfil the role they prescribed for him— but Cas had fixed the odds.

The ache within him was the summit of his eternity. Castiel knew, now, that if he let Dean Winchester die either ending or completing the Apocalypse then he could do no more. The irony of ‘good deeds’, of _‘free will’_ , would clamp its sharp jaws around him, and then he was already lost.

Dean let out a sheltered breath, a match enclosed within a shaking hand while the winds tore streaks across the sky.

“You gotta help me out.”

Cas nodded, and Dean pushed them back together. Dean was asking only for physical touch, but Cas had agreed to more than that.

Their lips were clinging to each other, as uselessly as the couple floating in the Atlantic ocean and slowly freezing to death in that film Castiel had been forced to watch. The crush of wasted time between them merged flashes of memory and prediction in Cas’ mind.

He saw sterile soil, the bodies of hundreds of young men strewn in the mud below him. Yellow water sucked at the feet of those heading towards the same end.

Hell is coming.

He let out an undistinguishable sound of grief, and tried to tug Dean closer. They were almost hurting each other now as they hung on the barest edges of their deepest wounds.

A yellow, blue, green, pink, grey sky stifling breath from the world, a bruise draped across the trees and terraces that constituted life as usual. Flames and, higher than the flames, smoke. Tortuous curls cursing the heavens that promised this, that delivered ‘The End’ in a package signed with gloating cursive.

Cas started to cry, salt winding between their tongues. Dean moved his hands to rest on the small of his back in a sturdy, but ultimately empty, gesture of reassurance.

They let each other go, the cold air sudden against their lips, a tangible knowledge of goodbye.

Their foreheads rested against each other as they simply stood and breathed.

Then Dean walked away, holding determination in his brow and a desperate plan in his mind.

 

* * *

 

“If we’ve already lost, I guess I got nothing to lose, right?”

Castiel and Bobby were united against Dean’s suicide mission, but it seemed to make no difference. Cas found that most of him was glad for this, the generous part (the part that loved Dean) happy that Dean had not lost himself so deeply as to lose his need to protect his brother.

The other part of him, the selfish angelic part (the part that almost loved Dean more), made him say the next words.

“I just want you to understand— the only thing you’re going to see out there is Michael killing your brother.”

They hadn’t spoken about the kisses. The meaning of it had not been mentioned, but even as Cas resolved not to follow Dean to his doom, he knew that he had already been overridden.

“Well, then I ain’t gonna let him die alone.”

Dean got into his car, and did not look back at Cas. He did not run to him, he made no confession and no declaration, but Castiel knew that as much as he knew what love was, he knew how Dean Winchester felt.

There was nothing within or without him. Castiel was the gaping void into which bad plans are drawn.

Hell is here.

 

* * *

 

For one shining moment, Castiel had been a hero.

Not in the Disney sense of the word— he had not scooped up his damsel and defeated the villains with the power of goodness and love. He didn’t even have a good catchphrase.

_Hey, ass-butt!_

He hadn’t even been the tormented tragic hero.

He knew it was hopeless, he just hoped that Dean would see that he was worth more than complacency and defeat.

Castiel wasn’t sure how he was knowing things— he was dead. There should be darkness, nothing. Angels didn’t go to heaven.

So where was he?

He woke, alive and empowered. His first thought (once he knew he could still think) was inevitable, obvious.

 

* * *

 

“You’re angry.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Cas tried to see if Dean was angry about the general state of the world, of God and Sam’s death, or angry about the fact Castiel was leaving. Simple, loose-end-tying, end-of-story leaving.

He couldn’t tell. He was new and improved, but still flawed. The ache was still there, in such a way that Cas knew it was not going to go away.

But Dean spoke only of Sam. And so Cas left.

And an empty car received the words.

“Well, you really suck at goodbyes, you know that?”

 

* * *

 

In the darkness outside Lisa’s house Castiel felt Hell’s own torment within himself.

He wanted to leave Dean where he was safe and content (if not happy). But the selfish, angel part of him (the part that still loved Dean) wanted him to wake up and come outside.

Even the generous part of him (the part which would give everything for Dean) wondered if Dean would be happier with him.

He knew it wasn’t true, tried to convince himself it wasn’t true.

He was leaving here, and there was nothing he was planning to take with him.

 

* * *

 

He failed to leave; he failed to uphold his own convictions.

He watched Dean, who breathed unevenly as he had a nightmare beside the woman he had chosen to live with.

Cas reached across and, with a gentle touch of his fingers, cleared Dean’s mind of the pain for as long as he remained asleep.

He hadn’t planned to take anything with him.

Just Dean.

 

* * *

 

Nowhere was safe, Castiel decided.

 

* * *

 

In a suburban garden, Castiel reappeared to Dean.

After Dean’s initial rage, he had only one thing to say.

“Love me now.”

Dean shattered and the barriers of normal life crumbled and the wreckage of a lifetime of hunting was unearthed. A decrepit gothic castle with its pointed spires destroyed and its crypts burnt out, with the odd chandelier here and there to reinforce the knowledge of what might or could have been, perhaps.

In that instant Cas regretted his decision. Dean deserved more, he knew that.

Dean’s breathing lurched between the mown grass and manicured hedgerows.

Castiel knew what would be best for Dean. He could leave him there to rake leaves, erase the last few moments of interaction.

But then Dean reached his hands around Castiel’s face, and he was encapsulated, enraptured.

Eyelashes tripped over bright green irises, and Cas breathed his words like a lack of hope across Dean’s lips.

“Kiss my mouth.”

Dean nodded, accepted the offering. Their kisses were butterflies, uncertain and infinite in their mortality. Winged lips acted in symmetry, in a flurry of sorrow and absolution that was as fragile and finely tuned as the Apocalypse itself turned out to be.

They were their own penance and their own forgiveness.

Castiel would take nothing with him, but they left together.


End file.
